Quivered with horror.
‘God omnipotent,
Is there no mercy? must our punishment
Be endless? will long ages roll away, 130
And see no term? Oh! wherefore hast Thou made
In mockery and wrath this evil earth?
Mercy becomes the powerful — be but just:
O God! repent and save.’
‘One way remains:
I will beget a Son, and He shall bear 135
The sins of all the world; He shall arise
In an unnoticed corner of the earth,
And there shall die upon a cross, and purge
The universal crime; so that the few
On whom My grace descends, those who are marked 140
As vessels to the honour of their God,
May credit this strange sacrifice, and save
Their souls alive: millions shall live and die,
Who ne’er shall call upon their Saviour’s name,
But, unredeemed, go to the gaping grave. 145
Thousands shall deem it an old woman’s tale,
Such as the nurses frighten babes withal:
These in a gulf of anguish and of flame
Shall curse their reprobation endlessly,
Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow, 150
Even on their beds of torment, where they howl,
My honour, and the justice of their doom.
What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughts
Of purity, with radiant genius bright,
Or lit with human reason’s earthly ray? 155
Many are called, but few will I elect.
Do thou My bidding, Moses!’
Even the murderer’s cheek
Was blanched with horror, and his quivering lips
Scarce faintly uttered—’O almighty One,
I tremble and obey!’ 160
‘O Spirit! centuries have set their seal
On this heart of many wounds, and loaded brain,
Since the Incarnate came: humbly He came,
Veiling His horrible Godhead in the shape
Of man, scorned by the world, His name unheard, 165
Save by the rabble of His native town,
Even as a parish demagogue. He led
The crowd; He taught them justice, truth, and peace,
In semblance; but He lit within their souls
The quenchless flames of zeal, and blessed the sword 170
He brought on earth to satiate with the blood
Of truth and freedom His malignant soul.
At length His mortal frame was led to death.
I stood beside Him: on the torturing cross
No pain assailed His unterrestrial sense; 175
And yet He groaned. Indignantly I summed
The massacres and miseries which His name
Had sanctioned in my country, and I cried,
“Go! Go!” in mockery.
A smile of godlike malice reillumed 180
His fading lineaments.—”I go,” He cried,
“But thou shalt wander o’er the unquiet earth
Eternally.” — The dampness of the grave
Bathed my imperishable front. I fell,
And long lay tranced upon the charmed soil. 185
When I awoke Hell burned within my brain,
Which staggered on its seat; for all around
The mouldering relics of my kindred lay,
Even as the Almighty’s ire arrested them,
And in their various attitudes of death 190
My murdered children’s mute and eyeless skulls
Glared ghastily upon me.
But my soul,
From sight and sense of the polluting woe
Of tyranny, had long learned to prefer
Hell’s freedom to the servitude of Heaven. 195
Therefore I rose, and dauntlessly began
My lonely and unending pilgrimage,
Resolved to wage unweariable war
With my almighty Tyrant, and to hurl
Defiance at His impotence to harm 200
Beyond the curse I bore. The very hand
That barred my passage to the peaceful grave
Has crushed the earth to misery, and given
Its empire to the chosen of His slaves.
These have I seen, even from the earliest dawn 205
Of weak, unstable and precarious power,
Then preaching peace, as now they practise war;
So, when they turned but from the massacre
Of unoffending infidels, to quench
Their thirst for ruin in the very blood 210
That flowed in their own veins, and pitiless zeal
Froze every human feeling, as the wife
Sheathed in her husband’s heart the sacred steel,
Even whilst its hopes were dreaming of her love;
And friends to friends, brothers to brothers stood 215
Opposed in bloodiest battle-field, and war,
Scarce satiable by fate’s last death-draught, waged,
Drunk from the winepress of the Almighty’s wrath;
Whilst the red cross, in mockery of peace,
Pointed to victory! When the fray was done, 220
No remnant of the exterminated faith
Survived to tell its ruin, but the flesh,
With putrid smoke poisoning the atmosphere,
That rotted on the half-extinguished pile.
‘Yes! I have seen God’s worshippers unsheathe 225
The sword of His revenge, when grace descended,
Confirming all unnatural impulses,
To sanctify their desolating deeds;
And frantic priests waved the ill-omened cross
O’er the unhappy earth: then shone the sun 230
On showers of gore from the upflashing steel
Of safe assassination, and all crime
Made stingless by the Spirits of the Lord,
And blood-red rainbows canopied the land.
‘Spirit, no year of my eventful being 235
Has passed unstained by crime and misery,
Which flows from God’s own faith. I’ve marked His slaves
With tongues whose lies are venomous, beguile
The insensate mob, and, whilst one hand was red
With murder, feign to stretch the other out 240
For brotherhood and peace; and that they now
Babble of love and mercy, whilst their deeds
Are marked with all the narrowness and crime
That Freedom’s young arm dare not yet chastise,
Reason may claim our gratitude, who now 245
Establishing the imperishable throne
Of truth, and stubborn virtue, maketh vain
The unprevailing malice of my Foe,
Whose bootless rage heaps torments for the brave,
Adds impotent eternities to pain, 250
Whilst keenest disappointment racks His breast
To see the smiles of peace around them play,
To frustrate or to sanctify their doom.
‘Thus have I stood, — through a wild waste of years
Struggling with whirlwinds of mad agony, 255
Yet peaceful, and serene, and self-enshrined,
Mocking my powerless Tyrant’s horrible curse
With stubborn and unalterable will,
Even as a giant oak, which Heaven’s fierce flame
Had scathed in the wilderness, to stand 260
A monument of fadeless ruin there;
Yet peacefully and movelessly it braves
The midnight conflict of the wintry storm,
As in the sunlight’s calm it spreads
Its worn and withered arms on high 265
To meet the quiet of a summer’s noon.’
The Fairy waved her wand:
Ahasuerus fled
Fast as the shapes of mingled shade and mist,
That lurk in the glens of a twili
ght grove, 270
Flee from the morning beam:
The matter of which dreams are made
Not more endowed with actual life
Than this phantasmal portraiture
Of wandering human thought. 275
8.
THE FAIRY:
‘The Present and the Past thou hast beheld:
It was a desolate sight. Now, Spirit, learn
The secrets of the Future. — Time!
Unfold the brooding pinion of thy gloom,
Render thou up thy half-devoured babes, 5
And from the cradles of eternity,
Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep
By the deep murmuring stream of passing things,
Tear thou that gloomy shroud. — Spirit, behold
Thy glorious destiny!’ 10
Joy to the Spirit came.
Through the wide rent in Time’s eternal veil,
Hope was seen beaming through the mists of fear:
Earth was no longer Hell;
Love, freedom, health, had given 15
Their ripeness to the manhood of its prime,
And all its pulses beat
Symphonious to the planetary spheres:
Then dulcet music swelled
Concordant with the life-strings of the soul; 20
It throbbed in sweet and languid beatings there,
Catching new life from transitory death, —
Like the vague sighings of a wind at even,
That wakes the wavelets of the slumbering sea
And dies on the creation of its breath, 25
And sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits:
Was the pure stream of feeling
That sprung from these sweet notes,
And o’er the Spirit’s human sympathies
With mild and gentle motion calmly flowed. 30
Joy to the Spirit came, —
Such joy as when a lover sees
The chosen of his soul in happiness,
And witnesses her peace
Whose woe to him were bitterer than death, 35
Sees her unfaded cheek
Glow mantling in first luxury of health,
Thrills with her lovely eyes,
Which like two stars amid the heaving main
Sparkle through liquid bliss. 40
Then in her triumph spoke the Fairy Queen:
‘I will not call the ghost of ages gone
To unfold the frightful secrets of its lore;
The present now is past,
And those events that desolate the earth 45
Have faded from the memory of Time,
Who dares not give reality to that
Whose being I annul. To me is given
The wonders of the human world to keep,
Space, matter, time, and mind. Futurity 50
Exposes now its treasure; let the sight
Renew and strengthen all thy failing hope.
O human Spirit! spur thee to the goal
Where virtue fixes universal peace,
And midst the ebb and flow of human things, 55
Show somewhat stable, somewhat certain still,
A lighthouse o’er the wild of dreary waves.
‘The habitable earth is full of bliss;
Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled
By everlasting snowstorms round the poles, 60
Where matter dared not vegetate or live,
But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude
Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed;
And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles
Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls 65
Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand,
Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet
To murmur through the Heaven-breathing groves
And melodize with man’s blest nature there.
‘Those deserts of immeasurable sand, 70
Whose age-collected fervours scarce allowed
A bird to live, a blade of grass to spring,
Where the shrill chirp of the green lizard’s love
Broke on the sultry silentness alone,
Now teem with countless rills and shady woods, 75
Cornfields and pastures and white cottages;
And where the startled wilderness beheld
A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood,
A tigress sating with the flesh of lambs
The unnatural famine of her toothless cubs, 80
Whilst shouts and howlings through the desert rang,
Sloping and smooth the daisy-spangled lawn,
Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles
To see a babe before his mother’s door,
Sharing his morning’s meal 85
With the green and golden basilisk
That comes to lick his feet.
‘Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail
Has seen above the illimitable plain,
Morning on night, and night on morning rise, 90
Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread
Its shadowy mountains on the sun-bright sea,
Where the loud roarings of the tempest-waves
So long have mingled with the gusty wind
In melancholy loneliness, and swept 95
The desert of those ocean solitudes,
But vocal to the sea-bird’s harrowing shriek,
The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm,
Now to the sweet and many-mingling sounds
Of kindliest human impulses respond. 100
Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem,
With lightsome clouds and shining seas between,
And fertile valleys, resonant with bliss,
Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave,
Which like a toil-worn labourer leaps to shore, 105
To meet the kisses of the flow’rets there.
‘All things are recreated, and the flame
Of consentaneous love inspires all life:
The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck
To myriads, who still grow beneath her care, 110
Rewarding her with their pure perfectness:
The balmy breathings of the wind inhale
Her virtues, and diffuse them all abroad:
Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere,
Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream: 115
No storms deform the beaming brow of Heaven,
Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride
The foliage of the ever-verdant trees;
But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair,
And Autumn proudly bears her matron grace, 120
Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of Spring,
Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit
Reflects its tint, and blushes into love.
‘The lion now forgets to thirst for blood:
There might you see him sporting in the sun 125
Beside the dreadless kid; his claws are sheathed,
His teeth are harmless, custom’s force has made
His nature as the nature of a lamb.
Like passion’s fruit, the nightshade’s tempting bane
Poisons no more the pleasure it bestows: 130
All bitterness is past; the cup of joy
Unmingled mantles to the goblet’s brim,
And courts the thirsty lips it fled before.
‘But chief, ambiguous Man, he that can know
More misery, and dream more joy than all; 135
Whose keen sensations thrill within his breast
To mingle with a loftier instinct there,
Lending their power to pleasure and to pain,
Yet raising, sharpening, and refining each;
Who stands amid the ever-varying world, 140
The burthen or the glory of the earth;
He chief perceives the change, his being not
es
The gradual renovation, and defines
Each movement of its progress on his mind.
‘Man, where the gloom of the long polar night 145
Lowers o’er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil,
Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost
Basks in the moonlight’s ineffectual glow,
Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night;
His chilled and narrow energies, his heart, 150
Insensible to courage, truth, or love,
His stunted stature and imbecile frame,
Marked him for some abortion of the earth,
Fit compeer of the bears that roamed around,
Whose habits and enjoyments were his own: 155
His life a feverish dream of stagnant woe,
Whose meagre wants, but scantily fulfilled,
Apprised him ever of the joyless length
Which his short being’s wretchedness had reached;
His death a pang which famine, cold and toil 160
Long on the mind, whilst yet the vital spark
Clung to the body stubbornly, had brought:
All was inflicted here that Earth’s revenge
Could wreak on the infringers of her law;
One curse alone was spared — the name of God. 165
‘Nor where the tropics bound the realms of day
With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame,
Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere
Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed
Unnatural vegetation, where the land 170
Teemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease,
Was Man a nobler being; slavery
Had crushed him to his country’s bloodstained dust;
Or he was bartered for the fame of power,
Which all internal impulses destroying, 175
Makes human will an article of trade;
Or he was changed with Christians for their gold,
And dragged to distant isles, where to the sound
Of the flesh-mangling scourge, he does the work
Of all-polluting luxury and wealth, 180
Which doubly visits on the tyrants’ heads
The long-protracted fulness of their woe;
Or he was led to legal butchery,
To turn to worms beneath that burning sun,
Where kings first leagued against the rights of men, 185
And priests first traded with the name of God.
‘Even where the milder zone afforded Man
A seeming shelter, yet contagion there,
Blighting his being with unnumbered ills,
Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth till late 190
Availed to arrest its progress, or create
That peace which first in bloodless victory waved
Her snowy standard o’er this favoured clime:
There man was long the train-bearer of slaves,
The mimic of surrounding misery, 195
Percy Bysshe Shelley Page 11
